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Casino, Cricket & Corsets

A recent event local to Diamond Fun Casino was an end of season fundraiser to raise funds for the Colchester & East Essex Cricket Club pavilion. It was well attended and everyone had great fun – including the croupiers!
Diamond Fun Casino provided blackjack, roulette & stud poker tables.
As seen in the image, the roulette table was sited under the Chairman’s board which details chairmen of the club dating back over 150 years.
The end of season in 1862 would have been celebrated slightly different to the fun casino entertainment provided this year!

Victorian parties would have been attended by ladies in overly tight corsets as was the fashion during this era. And as if the corsets were not tight enough to make the women pale skinned; arsenic, cheaply purchased from the chemists was a popular beauty treatment with women consuming it or bathing their skin with it to encourage a pale white complexion.
Crinoline skirts were popular and quite enormous which caused many women to suffer serious burns injuries and even death by waltzing too close to the open fires.
Men would wear loose fitting frock coats, wide cravats & neckties bow tied and top hats amongst other head wear.

What was going on in Queen Victoria’s England in 1862? A few random facts from that era :

In January 1862 over 200 coal miners were killed in the Hartley Pit disaster in Northumberland.
The Westminster Bridge in London as we know it today was opened in May.
Lewis Carroll (the pseudonym of Charles Dodgson) first breathed life into the story now known as Alice in Wonderland.
In August the tragic Joseph Merrick, aka the Elephant Man was born in Leicester. He was later exhibited in a travelling freak show.
Boys as young as 4 years old were still being used in deadly conditions to climb up inside & clean chimneys; this was outlawed finally in 1875.

And it was a full century before England’s first licensed land based casino opened.
In 1962 the Metropole Brighton casino opened its doors.